Video || Messina on the Spot About Selling Access to Obama

This is from Friday’ CBS This Morning Show, during which Organizing for Action chief Jim Messina was questioned about OFA’s policy of putting contributors who give $500,000 on an “advisory board” that meets quarterly with Obama.

Actually, the questioning was so lousy that he wasn’t exactly asked about that. Host Norah O’Donnell cites a $50,000 ticket to meet with Obama, but all that gets you is . . . Messina.

Nevertheless, I thought Messina’s effort at obfuscation was still sufficiently interesting that you would want to take a look.

I got an e-mail from BO this morning asking me to call my US Senator, Jeff Flake. Gave me his phone number too. So, I did. I told the nice lady who answered the phone that my President asked me to give SenFlake my opinion. So, I did. She laughed and said she would forward my opinion that Americans have a right to own firearms of any kind.

I think all this fretting over “access” is interesting, but still a distraction to the real concern we should have about this new version of OFA. As covered by Esquire in an article on David Plouffe and OFA back in 2009, OFA’s value is “the list”–the massive voter database and the technology behind it. And after this election, OFA did not fold back into the DNC like it did after Obama’s first.

In fact, it was just this last November (according to the Washington Post, link within article noted below) that parties within the DNC were already worrying over who and when, (obviously thinking OFA would stay within the DNC), would get access to that list. Now, though, the keys to that access are held by Obama et al. And “the list” and its technology have grown considerably, consisting of much more than simply contact information on Obama voters as it did in 2009.

It is that “access,” not necessarily to Obama, but to that “list” that we should be concerned about. Self-reporting of contributions, “social welfare” political ads, and meetings at the White House may be subjected to scrutiny of the media or IRS rules, but the access to the list will likely fall completely under the radar.

Good points. That’s something the Repubs don’t quite get; nobodies like me and mine receiving e-mails from Barack or Michelle or Jim or Stephanie might be the most exciting thing in my drab life. My US Senators have my e-mail address, they informed me how they were doing during their elections, but have not sent me anything since they won their positions.

It doesn’t cost anything to send-to-all or to access the database they already have, it’s just motivating someone in their office to keep in touch with their constituents. Two paragraphs, send-to-all, poof! it’s done.

It’s more, I think, than just the ability to send campaign emails. As I summed up in the piece, its about having vast amounts of information about the voting electorate that can be used to virtually “organize” a population, financed in a way that PR firms only dream about (and fortunately, past dictatorships didn’t have available to them).

Back to that Esquire article, according to the writer: Plouffe said that Obama “instructed [Plouffe] to make that list a new lever of government.”

Will that “lever” replace the ones at the polls, or is it supposed to supercede the levers of the other two branches? What kind of US President says that?

Back in 2009, Clinton’s Begala noted that such a database could “potentially revolutionize progressive politics.” “No president has ever entered office with this much information.”

Also in that article, a “highly placed” Dem said “It’s not the Democrat party anymore. It’s the Obama party.”

Imagine such a “new lever of government,” not under the control of a political party (and election law), but under the control of a President and his cohorts, disguised as a non-profit for “social welfare issues.”

Information technology of this magnitude and without oversight carries with it the same kind of concern as drone technology–both new things that previous administrations and legislatures did not have to deal with. But now, we do. Just imagine either kind of technology in the wrong hands, or hands not sufficiently made accountable….

I agree. All the dems I know-including the intelligent ones- are wrapped up or woven into this network. And it is not so much that they are information driven – it’s all kind of accepted as fact or true. They do not deviate and they do not question. These are not stupid people by any means. It’s rather bizarre and I do not understand how otherwise intelligent high functioning people can be so non curious. The lists are gold and the propaganda is constant.

Messina apparently lives at Pooh Corner, considering how much of it he dishes out. OFA’s “only” purpose is to back Obama’s agenda? How about destroying the GOP? What kind of real “grass roots” is run from HQ in D.C. and Chicago? And finally, since Messina apparently needs to use the term “grass roots” every eighteen seconds, we should remember what real grass roots evolve into after they’ve passed through the bull……

I love getting up daily to more good news from washington. He should not getting away with this and If people don’t see how sick and twisted this shit is then I don’t know what it will take.

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Friday, July 31, 2015

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